


Rain, Red Wine, and Melodies

by inverse_asterism



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Art Block, Gen, I have no idea, also kinda sorta takes inspiration from fox wedding folklore, corpse is never named in-story but it is intended to be him, partially inspired by the original little mermaid fairy tale, romantic in a platonic kind of way, sykkuno is a rain spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29818248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse_asterism/pseuds/inverse_asterism
Summary: “Tomorrow I’ll bring you a bottle of Pinot Noir.”What do you do when a mysterious visitor shows up on your fifteenth-floor balcony with a bottle of wine and a request for you to sing? You drink the wine, naturally.
Relationships: Corpse Husband/Sykkuno (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 125





	Rain, Red Wine, and Melodies

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know I wrote this in one sitting this afternoon.

The rain was deafening, a constant drone of white noise outside the window. It drummed against the roof, dripped off the eaves to plink against the balcony railing, and spattered dissonant freestyle percussion against the side of the building in sporadic gusts of wind. It was all encompassing, rousing him from restless sleep and enticing him out of bed for the first time in almost two days.

It had been so long since he saw light that even the ambient haze of a late afternoon under heavy cloud hurt his eyes and forced him to squint. The world outside was shades of gray; deep and blueish under the clouds, gritty cement lower to the ground, and wisps of dingy cotton clung to the edge of taller buildings and draped over the green-grey mountains in the far distance.

It was, unironically, his favorite kind of weather.

He undid the latch and opened the balcony door, letting the sound of the rain and the wind fill the room. The chill immediately gave him gooseflesh, and he would regret being sockless in short time, but in the interim it felt good on his face.

He folded in on himself, sinking to the floor and putting his back to the wall, leaning against the doorframe and letting one hand rest limply against the damp screen door. Any significant gust of wind at the right angle would leave him soaked but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and let the chilly rain envelope him completely.

It was the perfect moment to sit back and enjoy a ~~glass~~ ~~bottle~~ glass of wine. But he knew the kitchen was barren. No wine, no beer, no whiskey or gin, not even a dusty bottle of everclear he’d made himself forget about. He’d smashed that last time the urge hit him, both figuratively and literally.

He smirked at himself, and the familiar self-destructive thought patterns he fell into. “Just one bottle of red, that’s all I ask for…”

“Any preferences?”

The sudden sound of another voice, soft and gentle, oddly reminding him of a warm spring rain completely different from the current weather, surprised him. Although, not nearly as much as he felt like it should have. How many days had it been since he heard another voice? How many weeks? Could it even have been months? Not to mention…

He opened his eyes and frowned at the owner of the voice. “This is the fifteenth floor.”

The owner of the voice leaned precariously back from where he sat on the balcony railing and looked down. “So it is.”

“You’re getting wet.”

“So I am.”

“How did you even get in here?”

A playful smile curved along his lips, and he hid a giggle behind one hand. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“You appeared out of nowhere on my balcony in the rain to ask my wine preferences?”

“Yup.”

He rocked his head back and lethargically searched the ceiling for an answer. “Anything, really. I’m not picky at this point.”

A soft _tmp_ sound made him look back at the balcony, just in time to see his mysterious guest straighten up from placing a bottle of red wine he most certainly had not been holding a second ago next to him. He pushed open the screen door and raised his eyebrows as he read the label. “Merlot?”

“I heard someone mention it once.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Maybe a little.”

He contemplated the mystery guest more. The bottle was heavy and cool in his hands. Probably he wasn’t hallucinating, and even if he was, his mind had come up with worse. He pushed the screen open more and pulled his legs in to sit cross-legged and make room. “Might as well come in. I can’t be bothered to go get glasses, if you don’t mind sharing the bottle…”

“I don’t mind.”

The mystery guest sat and watched, fascinated, as he used his pocket knife to work the cork out of the bottle of Merlot and take a swig. The wine was rich and sweet and he was probably going to regret drinking it on an empty stomach later. He passed the bottle to his guest. The guest sipped carefully, holding the bottle with two hands and staining his already pink lips darker. He handed the bottle back and they watched the rain in silence.

“I miss your singing,” the guest blurted out with the kind of rushed momentum of someone who had been withholding a secret and could finally tell it.

He paused in taking his next drink, flicked a glance over at him and said “Yeah?” then took a longer drink than initially intended.

“You always used to sing when it rained.”

“Haven’t… had much inspiration lately… I guess…” He almost said ‘any inspiration’ but changed his mind last minute. The guest looked so earnest something inside him didn’t want to disappoint him, somehow. If that made any sense.

“Can I do anything to help?”

His bitter laugh mingled with the rain and the cold and the view of the guest’s wine-tinted lips and cheeks to create a surreal atmosphere. “I don’t think so.”

“Are you sure? It’ll rain for two more days after today, I’d like to do something to help, if, if… if I can… I’ll do anything. I want to help.”

He contemplated the deepening gray outside as the afternoon turned to evening. The last of the Merlot was almost sickeningly sweet on his tongue and he felt like the fog on the horizon had moved into his brain. “Two more days, huh?”

“Two more days.”

“So you’ll be back tomorrow?”

“Uh-huh. If, uh, if you’ll have me.”

He leaned forward to set the empty bottle of Merlot out past the overhang of the roof, where drops of rain could plink off the glass and periodically lucky ones could sneak inside for a taste of the residue on the inside of the bottle and share a drink with him and his mystery guest. “Bring another bottle, wouldja?”

Drinking on an empty stomach had definitely been a bad idea. Or a good one. He wasn’t sure. In any case, he slept without dreaming for the first time in recent memory.

It was again late in the afternoon when he found the energy to get out of bed. The sound of the rain was pervasive, sounding as though it might even be falling harder than the previous day. When he opened the curtains the bottle of Merlot was overflowing with rainwater, rivulets chasing each other down the smooth glass with each drip that found its mark and struck the tremulous rounded surface of the water at its rim. His mystery guest was also sitting on the rail again.

He opened the door and leaned lethargically against the frame. “That’s dangerous.”

“I brought another bottle. This one is, um, Beaujolais Nouveau,” he read off the label, pronouncing it ‘byoo-jo-lays noh-vyoo’ in a way that both grated on the nerves and yet was still kind of endearing somehow, “another one I heard someone mention once.”

“ _Beaujolais Nouveau_ ,” he corrected him, pushing open the screen. “I can’t drink on an empty stomach again. Come on.” The guest took one step inside before he thought better and put out a hand. “Hold up.” He went to the bathroom and came back with a towel. “You’re soaked. How long were you sitting out there?”

“Um… how long has it been raining again?”

He paused. What did that have to do with it? “Huh?”

“Uhm! Uh! Nothing. Not, not too long…?”

If this wasn’t the fifteenth floor and on the opposite side of the building from the fire escape, he might have started wondering if the mystery guest was a stalker or some other dangerous person. For the most part he seemed harmless. Standing in the dim light of his bedroom, the mystery guest was nearly as tall as he was, slim and lanky, like he’d been drawn into existence with long, smooth brush strokes. Long legs, long arms, long fingers, long torso, all balanced by a soft voice and gentle, friendly mannerisms that made him seem weirdly innocent and ageless at the same time.

“You got a name, or should I just call you the red wine fairy?”

The guest looked surprised. “Um…”

“If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I won’t tell you mine.”

“Sy. You can call me Sy.”

 _Sigh_ , it sounded like, almost as if he’d come up with the name inspired by the one that had escaped his lips in the pause before assuring him he didn’t have to give a name. “Okay, Sy. Kitchen’s this way. Probably empty, though…”

Sy paused on the way to look at a closed door. He put a hand on the wood but didn’t open it. Somehow he already seemed to know which room it was. “Will you sing today?”

“How do you know what room that is?”

“Sometimes you leave the window open.”

True. Sometimes he even recorded the sound of the rain for ambient noise when the songs called for it. But again, this was the fifteenth floor.

The kitchen by some small miracle produced a box of pasta and some butter of questionable age in the back of the fridge. Better than nothing. While he boiled the pasta, Sy rocked on his heels and suggested, “If you feel up to it, day after tomorrow you should go buy some groceries. Or maybe you can get some delivered.”

Day after tomorrow. Yesterday he’d said the rain would continue for two more days.

“How do you know the rain will stop after tomorrow?”

“Where do you keep your plates and cutlery?”

A penchant for deflection appeared to be something he and his mystery guest had in common.

They ate buttered noodles and shared the bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau sitting on the bedroom floor and watched the rain. They talked some but not much.

He did not sing.

But on the way back from washing the dishes he did pause at the closed door. The rain on the roof and outside the still-open balcony door down the hall filled his ears. The warm comforting presence of his mystery guest filled his hands with purpose. Aimless purpose, still, but that was still better than the empty void of despair and self-loathing it had pushed aside.

When he returned to the bedroom, Sy was sitting on the rail again. It was evening now, and with no lights on in the bedroom he was barely a shadow in the dark. He could just make out the rainwater dripping off his hair to fall like tears into the puddles on the balcony floor.

“Tomorrow I’ll bring you a bottle of Pinot Noir,” Sy said in parting.

“The ‘t’ is silent,” he told him, and the closed door in the hall called to him.

Even later in the afternoon of the third day, he had not slept. Several consecutive hours at the computer had left his eyes grainy and strained, his throat was dry and scratchy from retakes, and his ears felt funny and compressed from wearing headphones too long. His joints cracked and he grimaced as he sat back.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the rain outside the window, pattering against the roof. It was lighter than yesterday. Maybe it really would stop tomorrow.

With a jolt he sat upright. That’s right. Today was the third day.

He swayed on his feet from standing up too quickly and put a hand on the computer desk to steady himself. It had easily been over 24 hours since those buttered noodles and Beaujolais Nouveau, which probably also wasn’t helping. Judging by how dark the apartment was, much of the day had already passed him by. The curtains were still open from the previous day. The Merlot and Beaujolais Nouveau bottles stood side-by-side in the middle of the balcony like friends who had decided to become new homes for rainwater together.

He opened the balcony door and said by way of greeting, “You could have just come in.” No sooner had the words left his lips than he realized how much he meant them.

“It’s okay, you left the window open for me to hear.”

“Do you think pizza goes with _Pinot_ Noir?”

Sy giggled and hopped off the rail. “The ‘t’ is silent.”

They ate delivery pizza off napkins and shared the bottle of Pinot Noir as the night deepened and the rain fell like a lullabye outside.

“Do you only know generic famous wines?”

“Your new song sounds nice.”

He was of mind to see how far they could get without ever directly addressing the last thing the other said, but decided against it. “It’s not finished yet.”

“I’m just happy to have heard your voice again.”

“I’ll…” the air suddenly seemed thicker, and he had no explanation for how he worded the rest of his sentence when it finally found voice, “have it finished by the next time it rains.”

Sy went very still, pausing in the process of licking sauce from his fingers. He smiled sadly. “That would be nice.”

There was a finality somewhere in there that made him ache with loss and he didn’t know why. He looked outside at the rain. Already it seemed like it might be tapering off. He drank more wine and distantly wondered where the rain went when it wasn’t falling.

As if that made any sense.

Like a promise kept, the next day dawned under a high, clear blue sky, without a cloud in sight or a breath of wind. He woke mid-afternoon and stared at the ceiling, feeling like his ears were ringing from the abrupt absence of sound.

He collected the empty pizza box and napkins and took them to the kitchen to put in the trash. Then he crossed the apartment again and opened the balcony door. Outside it was warm, the air was pleasant, and the only sign that remained of the rain was the three bottles of rain water, two full and one almost but not quite. He contemplated the third, disliking how it was somehow incomplete, before emptying all three and taking them inside. He lined them up on the living room windowsill. The only decorations in the entire apartment.

He walked to the closed door in the hallway, then walked away from it.

He put away the two plates and two forks that had been left by the sink to dry in the kitchen.

He partially opened the door in the hallway, then closed it again and wandered back to the bedroom.

There was a used towel on the floor by the bed. It smelled like rain.

He went back to the computer and opened Pro Tools.

It was very early the next morning when he finished. The floor of the balcony was cool against his bare feet as he stepped outside. The metal railing was cold against his hand. He leaned out, dangerously far, and looked to the sky.

There was still not a cloud in sight.

“I finished it!” he called out into the morning air, throat sore and voice gravelly from hours spent singing and days without sleep. The ache wouldn’t go away, even after he’d poured it into the melody and the lyrics and the arrangement and the memories of red wine shared on rainy afternoons. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. He was dying of thirst and the empty sky was an endless desert. “I finished it and you have to hear it. I need you to hear it.”

Not a single cloud, not even over the distant mountains. It would have to rain again someday but he didn’t want to wait. He couldn’t wait. He felt as though the ache would grow and devour him whole before he finished waiting.

He started on the wrong key, and the ache inside threw his breathing off, but he sang, throwing the words out like drops of rain or tears or wine or he didn’t know into the morning light. He only gave into his exhaustion when it was done and slumped forward over the railing. The towel that smelled of rain slipped off his shoulder to flutter down and down towards the ground below.

He was completely alone.

The sun broke over the mountains and in that moment there was a pattering behind him, a brief sunshower of rain that came and went like a dream. Only the droplets of water he shook from his hair as he lifted his head remained as proof that it had been real.

“I loved it,” Sy told him, standing on the railing next to him.

“I told you that’s dangerous,” he admonished, holding out his arms. Sy hopped down into them, smelling like early-morning rain and laughing like sunshine breaking through clouds.


End file.
